A skater bends over a roaring chainsaw and shoots across a frozen lake. In spring 2015, Swedish skier Erik Sunnerheim posted a clip of himself ice skating propelled by a chainsaw, and within days it was being shared by Gizmodo, TIME and news sites around the world.
Erik Sunnerheim’s chainsaw skating video
Gizmodo’s Sploid section ran the video on 30 March 2015, describing Sunnerheim “zooming over the ice while carving with a chainsaw”. TIME followed on 1 April. Spring had officially arrived, TIME noted, but many Swedish lakes were still frozen, and Sunnerheim used the late ice for a run that looked like a cross between skating and a motorsport.
The joke of the clip is in the combination: two everyday Nordic winter tools, skates and a chainsaw, put to a use nobody expected. Gizmodo’s writer admitted his first thought was that it looked fun, followed quickly by a list of everything that could go wrong.
The stunt is credited to Erik Sunnerheim, whose Instagram is the credit for the still above, and the clip was also shared by the compilation channel Mick’s Best.
Tour skating: Sweden’s real lake sport
Sweden has a much gentler tradition of skating on wild ice. Tour skating, långfärdsskridskoåkning, means long-distance skating across natural ice on lakes, marshes, rivers and the sea. It developed in Sweden in the 1900s and is still hugely popular, with the Stockholm Ice Skate Sailing and Touring Club (SSSK) the country’s largest association.
- Long blades: Nordic touring skates have blades about 50 cm long that clip onto boots similar to cross-country ski boots, often with a free heel, and come off for walking between lakes.
- Long days: tours of 60–80 km in a day are not unusual, and strong skaters go beyond 150 km.
- Season: the longest tours usually happen in January and February, when parts of the Baltic archipelago freeze.
Ice safety on frozen lakes
Touring skaters carry a standard safety kit: ice claws worn around the neck to haul yourself out of a hole, an ice pike for testing the ice ahead, a throw line, and a backpack with dry bags that holds spare clothes and doubles as a buoyancy aid. Helmets and knee and elbow pads are common.
Thickness matters. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources advises staying off new clear ice under 4 inches (10 cm), with 4 inches the minimum for activities on foot. White ice, formed when snow melts and refreezes, is only about half as strong, so the guideline doubles to about 8 inches. Late-season spring ice, like the ice in Sunnerheim’s clip, needs extra caution: skate it with an experienced local group.
For more on frozen-lake adventures, see Ice Driving in Western Norway: Tracks Across a Frozen Surface. For other winter clips, watch Sorin Radu’s avalanche recording, or try a gentler project with colourful ice-orb decorations.
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